Access

Last night I was hosting a dinner/meeting in my backyard for about twenty leaders of various ministries in our church. We had a great time together eating and laughing and were just starting to get down to business when the sliding glass door opened and out came my two adorable grandbabies in their jammies for goodnight kisses from Grammie.

The kids stood shyly in the doorway as my daughter asked us to excuse the interruption, but Evie had insisted she couldn’t go to bed without her good night kisses. My daughter told me later that she had tried to explain that Grammie was in a meeting, but Evie looked at her determinedly and said, “She will WANT to kiss me, Mama! I KNOW it!!”

Of course, from the second I had seen them in the doorway, my arms had been open wide. The meeting could wait, my guests could wait – these little people have my heart, and they are well aware of it. They ran right to me, I wrapped them in my arms, kissed their precious heads and thanked them for remembering to come give me kisses.

That moment was the most special of my day.

As I lay in bed last night, I thought of this passage in Hebrews :

“And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death, Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him.” (Heb. 10:19-20)

My daughter's little ones trust my love for them. They know that I will want their kisses no matter how busy I seem. They know they are my priority and that my affection for them is assured no matter what the circumstance. Their presence is not only welcomed, it is longed for.

I am so grateful I serve a God who went to such great lengths to open the way for me to have the same kind of assurance of His love for me! Jesus died to cleanse me of the guilt and shame and sin that kept me from believing God’s love for me could ever be pure and true and unconditional. He washed away that lie, and He shows me evidence every day of His attentive care.

You see, it’s not that God doesn’t love us the way we long to be loved; it’s that we can’t believe God could ever love us that way because we are so very aware of our deficiencies. It’s the sin/shame combination that keeps us from experiencing the love that is already ours.

But His love "always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." His love never fails.

He’s always ready to scoop us in His arms because we already have His heart!

Let's run in.

Saturday Evening Post

http://www.elizabethesther.com/2011/07/the-saturday-evening-blog-post-vol-3-issue-6.html#comment-15786

The link above is to blogger I follow, Elizabeth Esther. She had this great idea of bloggers sharing their favorite post of the month on her site, and the readers get to peruse new writers each week!

Check out her blog and some of the others when you have time. It's a great way to find people whose perspective might just speak to you. :)

One Answer

It's impossible to overstate how unqualified I am for the job of advising other people how to live their lives. Or how to deal with massive pain. Or how to recover from the unthinkable. And yet, quite often I am asked to lend an ear and an opinion on issues beyond my experience and knowledge.

Today, for instance, I had two meetings scheduled with different women who just wanted to share with me what they are going through. On one specific day, two different women had chosen me to confide in, to seek advice from, hoping I would have some insight for them.

When people make appointments like this -- I mean, when they actually call or email and get out calendars and schedule a meeting-- I feel like it's a big deal, and I know that I'm really going to need God to give me wisdom because I could easily say what they want to hear or what sounds good to me instead of what may be difficult but necessary. I also know how limited I am in my own understanding.

So I pray about meetings like this, and I let God know that I am listening for His leading. I ask Him to help me express His truth, His grace, His love, His forgiveness, His mercy.

Today, it turned out that both women needed the same message I need: to live loved.

Human nature is to try and earn God's love when we already have it! We set ourselves up for a never-ending race up the down escalator by thinking that our good behavior is what God is interested in. After all, isn't that what the 10 Commandments are about? Doesn't God hate our sin? If He hates it when I sin, then isn't He truly disgusted with me about 70% of the time? Doesn't He want me to get my act together so He can be proud of me? If I try harder, if I work on myself, if I break those bad habits, if I stick to the program... if I, if I, if I...

And when I fail, I'm so ashamed. And I do what we've done from the beginning: I hide. I retreat. I shake my head in disgust. And after awhile, it seems useless to try for the millionth time. Right? Are you feeling me??

What if our hearts could grasp the notion that we are already loved as fully and completely as any human being can be loved? What if we could transfer this "head knowledge" down deep into our souls? What if we reminded ourselves every morning that no matter what happens to us on this day, we are truly and deeply loved- that God is committed to loving us as much as He possibly can?

This is the TRUTH, friends! Instead of focusing on changing our behavior, let's allow Him to fill us up with the fact that He created us to LIVE LOVED! As we let the Truth of God's love deep down into our souls, our behavior will naturally change.

And we will serve God out of gratitude instead of fear.

And we will have what Jesus calls "abundant life- life to the full!"

Don't ignore sin in your life. Confess it. Renounce it. But don't make getting rid of sin the focus of what is supposed to be a love relationship with Jesus. Love beats sin every time.

Let's learn to live... loved.

It Started with a Glance

It started with a glance,

a knowing smile,

eyes that locked two seconds too long.

Flattering.

Intriguing.

Exciting.

It ended with a family's lives shattered: a woman shaken to her core, children grieving their father's betrayal.

The latest news from the world of entertainment chronicles the story's development. The other woman a trusted employee. A secret love child. Years of deception.

Today at the grocery store, the checker greeted me with, "Hey, what do you think about Arnold?"

Wow. My overwhelming emotion as I hear more and more about this story is one of profound sadness. Because, you know what?

He didn't set out to lose his wife.

He didn't set out to cause his own children the deepest wound they'd yet received.

He didn't set out to become a joke.

It all started with just one glance. Because that's how sin is. It's attractive. It's alluring. It seems harmless enough. It makes promise after promise, and keeps stringing us along until suddenly we're trapped in a sticky web of lies and consequences. And then we owe a debt we can't pay. There's no way to retrace our steps, or find the "undo" button.

It's done. We're in.

And we can't get out.

So we hide. And we get by. And we almost forget from time to time until something happens months or years later to shake us awake. If and when we face the music, we realize that our secret decisions, our personal choices haven't just hurt us - they've hurt those we love the most. In our quest to build something just for ourselves, we have destroyed something infinitely more valuable.

We have every right to be disgusted with our former governor. His choices were despicable. His deeds, completely and utterly self-centered.

But let's also remember, it all started with a glance.

What have you been glancing at lately?

Grateful

Sometimes I play this little game with myself: I try to narrow down a person's personality to one defining characteristic. Some people are so balanced in virtue that they make this game more difficult. And some people I don't know well enough to define. But I find that many people have a quality about them that sort of rises above the others- it encapsulates them fairly well.

About a year ago, I met a guy we'll call Max. Max has spent half of his life in and out of prison for various drug-related offenses. Max says prison saved his life. Max says prison was God's way of answering his prayers not to die.

He's been out for a few years now, is living clean and sober and working his 12 steps. In the course of those years while working the program, he met a woman he felt was clearly out of his league. They became friends. And their friendship turned into love. A couple of months ago, Max married this amazing, beautiful, positive woman who loves him despite his past. Despite his flaws. Despite his lack of a credit score or a bank account.

Max comes to church, and soaks up the teaching like a sponge. He is thirsty for it. He tries to put everything he learns into action.

He's open to advice -- he seeks it out, and then says, "Thank you for that. Thank you!"

Max likes to tell the people who invest in him how much he appreciates them. He lives like someone who wants to make up for lost time. He works his maintenance job with devotion under the assumption that he can help other people by doing good work. He can make a difference.

Max wants to take chances on people the way people have taken chances on him.

Max inspires me. He's absolutely great to be around. I can't help but think life is better when I see it from his perspective.

Clearly, his defining quality is gratitude.

I am learning that gratitude is a choice.

Choosing it makes life joyous, precious, full of meaning and purpose.

Being around Max makes me realize that I take too much for granted. Life is not always what you see, it's how you see it.

Choosing gratitude today.

Thank you for that, Max.

Thank you!

Transcendently Oblivious

I was maneuvering through the small room crowded with round tables and chairs with a plate of pulled pork in one hand and plastic utensils in the other when I first noticed her.

In the corner of the room was a small stage, and on that stage was a lone woman with her guitar. She was strumming and singing. The room was full of women on lunch break from a small women's conference held in a local church. Everyone was getting settled into their chairs, opening their bags of chips and talking about the experiences of the morning. Absolutely no one paid any attention to her.

She had her eyes closed. A half-smile played around her lips as she swayed on her stool. She was really just playing two chords over and over and singing her own spontaneous praises to the Lord. Her voice was nice, but not beautiful. And she definitely wasn't a master of the guitar. But she didn't care at all. She just played and sang the entire 30 minutes it took us to eat lunch.

Sat there, eyes closed.

Smiling.

Singing to her audience of One.

And then it hit me...

"Can I ask you something?"

The young woman who sat across from me surprised me with this question as we were (I thought) wrapping up our time together.

"Sure," I replied.

"Why do you believe what you believe?"

Wow. As a "Professional Christian," I suppose this is the part where I should have dusted off my apologetics notes and made a case for the historical Jesus, the veracity of the gospel accounts, the evidence for the Resurrection, etc. -- but I honestly didn't even think of all that.

I thought of the Truth - the real reason I believe. Ironically, I had never said it aloud before. You know how sometimes you're actually processing as you speak and at the moment you hear yourself verbalize something, the idea has just crystallized for you? That is what happened to me at that moment. I heard myself speaking and I instantly knew.

The reason I believe in the God of the Bible is because I love His story.

Does that strike you as heretical at first? Hear me out.

I think we ALL love stories. We pay to see stories in the movies; we escape our own realities by watching others' stories unfold on tv or by immersing ourselves in books. When we meet people, we want to hear their stories. We love stories because stories matter - they really matter to us. We connect with the characters, the plot, the twists and turns that capture our imagination and thrill us.

And of all the gods offered up by all the religions out there, there's only One who is the ultimate hero - the One who is on a no-holds-barred rescue mission to save the arrogant rebels who snubbed His love and then found themselves on a collision course with Death.

There's only one God who loves like a daddy - the kind of daddy who would fight the bad guys and risk everything to save His kids. There's only one God who says, "Let them go! Take me instead!" and sacrifices Himself -- actually lays down His weapons and lets Himself be taken away to be tortured and killed so that His children can be freed.

There is only One conquering hero who came to earth with a rescue plan to win us back.

I believe that story because something deep inside me resonates that it is true, it is RIGHT, it is real. I want to see it again and again and again in movies, in books, in life. And so do you. You shake your head at the arrogance and ignorance of the victim who runs headlong into trouble. You worry when the hero puts himself in jeopardy, but you couldn't respect him if he didn't. You cringe when it appears the antagonist has finally gotten the upper hand. You marvel at the love and courage it takes for the hero to sacrifice himself to redeem the victim. And you rejoice when he overcomes!

The story of the One True God is written inside of all of us. It's what we all need, whether we realize it or not. The Bible unveils this story over thousands of years with layers and layers of foreshadowing. It's a story told by poetry, prose, character development, declaration, and history. It's easy to get bogged down in the minutia of the bible, but the truth is this: if you had to boil the Bible down to its essence, it's an amazing revelation of Someone so noble, so worthy of admiration and adulation, so powerful yet so loving that it's easy to see He's the ultimate Hero. He's the One who proves His love by compelling, forceful action.

You and I are made in the image of the God of the Bible.

His story is the one we most want to be true.

And I believe it is.